- FDA Warns Against URGENT/11 Vulnerabilities Affecting Medical Devices and Hospital Networks
October 1, 2019
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is informing patients, health care providers and facility staff, and manufacturers about cybersecurity vulnerabilities that may introduce risks for certain medical devices and hospital networks. The FDA is not aware of any confirmed adverse events related to these vulnerabilities. However, software to exploit these vulnerabilities is already publicly ...
- NHS staff issued with fresh cyber security guidance
September 23, 2019
NHS Digital has launched an organisation-wide cyber security campaign to provide staff with the most up-to-date guidance on how to avoid and mitigate potential cyber threats and data breaches. With the NHS being one of the biggest direct and indirect targets for cyber criminals, NHS Digital’s ‘Keep I.T. Confidential‘ campaign is hoping to educate the workforce on the ...
- NHS must spend now to prevent devastation of ‘WannaCry 2.0’
July 4, 2019
The government must urgently pump more money into cyber securitywithin the NHS to plug gaps that render the healthcare system vulnerable to an attack more destructive than the WannaCry saga. Although many positive steps have been taken since the 2017 attack, a lack of investment, a deficit of skills and awareness, and the use of out-dated systems are ...
- MongoDB Leak Exposed Millions of Medical Insurance Records
June 28, 2019
Millions of records containing personal information and medical insurance data were exposed by a database belonging to insurance marketing website MedicareSupplement.com. An online database belonging to insurance marketing website MedicareSupplement.com was found exposing more than 5 million records with personal information. MedicareSupplement.com is a U.S.-based marketing site that allows users to find supplemental medical insurance available in their ...
- Massive Quest Diagnostics data breach impacts 12 million patients
June 4, 2019
A massive data breach has struck Quest Diagnostics and the information of up to 11.9 million patients has potentially been compromised. On Monday, the US clinical laboratory said that American Medical Collection Agency (AMCA), a billing collections provider that works with Quest, informed the company that an unauthorized user had managed to obtain access to AMCA systems. Through the ...
- Millions of Medical Documents for Addiction and Recovery Patients Leaked
April 22, 2019
The information includes data on all rehab treatments and procedures, linked with patients’ names and other info. As if wrestling with addiction and recovery weren’t difficult enough, tens of thousands of patients of a rehab clinic in Pennsylvania may find their personal information hijacked and manipulated by identity thieves or extortionists. An ElasticSearch database that was left ...
- Pharma Giant Bayer ‘Contains’ Cyber Attack
April 4, 2019
German firm detected hacker code and covertly monitored it for over a year, before clearing it from network Security officials at the German multinational pharmaceutical and life sciences giant Bayer AG seem to be on the ball after they detected and then contained a cyber attack. It is reported that the Winnti hacking group had gained access ...
- Medtronic’s Implantable Defibrillators Vulnerable to Life-Threatening Hacks
March 22, 2019
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security Thursday issued an advisory warning people of severe vulnerabilities in over a dozen heart defibrillators that could allow attackers to fully hijack them remotely, potentially putting lives of millions of patients at risk. Cardioverter Defibrillator is a small surgically implanted device (in patients’ chests) that gives a patient’s heart an ...
- How to Attack and Defend a Prosthetic Arm
February 26, 2019
The IoT world has long since grown beyond the now-ubiquitous smartwatches, smartphones, smart coffee machines, cars capable of sending tweets and Facebook posts and other stuff like fridges that send spam. Today’s IoT world now boasts state-of-the-art solutions that quite literally help people. Take, for example, the biomechanical prosthetic arm made by Motorica Inc. This ...
- Ransomware encrypts Australian cardiac clinic’s patient files
February 21, 2019
Employees of Melbourne Heart Group in Malvern, Australia, have been unable to access patients’ medical records following a January ransomware attack that encrypted the health care provider’s files. The cardiology clinic disclosed the incident today on its website’s home page. “We have been assured that no patient’s privacy has been compromised in any way,” the statement reads. ...
- Cumbria health trust hit by 147 cyber attacks in five years
January 19, 2019
The NHS in Cumbria has been hit by more than 150 cyber attacks in five years, the BBC can reveal. Of these, 147 were directed at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust (UHMBT), which runs hospitals in Barrow, Kendal, Morecambe and Lancaster. The trust said it had spent £29,600 in 2017 dealing with the effects of ...
- Google Taking Over Health Records Raises Patient Privacy Fears
November 21, 2018
Three years ago, artificial intelligence company DeepMind embarked on a landmark effort to transform health care in the U.K. Now plans by owner Alphabet Inc. to wrap the partnership into its Google search engine business are tripping alarm bells about privacy. Data protection advocates cried foul when the company reversed course on an earlier pledge to keep DeepMind ...
- Healthcare Targeted by 37 Percent of All Ransomware Attacks in Q3 2018
November 7, 2018
During the third quarter of 2018 ransomware attacks were at an all-time high and the ransoms asked from organizations to decrypt the locked files were also on the rise according to a report from Beazley Breach Response (BBR) Services. According to their analysis, the number of ransomware attacks more than doubled during September when compared to ...
- HealthCare.gov system hack leaves 75,000 individuals exposed
October 20, 2018
A hack was detected earlier this month in a government computer system that works alongside HealthCare.gov, exposing the personal information of approximately 75,000 people, according to the agency in charge of the portal. In a statement to CNN, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said the system that was exposed through the hack was ...
- Health insurer Bupa fined £175k after staffer tried to sell customer data on dark web souk
September 28, 2018
International health insurance business Bupa has been fined £175,000 after a staffer tried to sell more than half a million customers’ personal information on the dark web. The miscreant was able to access Bupa’s CRM system SWAN, which holds records on 1.5 million people, generate and send bulk data reports on 547,000 Bupa Global customers to ...
- Forget WannaCry, staff themselves pose a risk to healthcare data
September 3, 2018
More than half of all healthcare data breaches reported during 2017 could be traced back to people on the inside of victim organisations, according to an annual study by Verizon. The company’s latest Protected Health Information Data Breach Report (PHIDBR) looked at 1,368 mostly US examples, identifying 782 (57.5 per cent) as having an insider element. A ...
- Retro tech leaves NHS open to cyber-attacks, say researchers
August 20, 2018
Hackers could gain access to NHS networks by exploiting vulnerabilities in fax machines, security researchers have suggested. Staff at Check Point Software discovered exploits in widely-used fax machines that enable hackers to spread malware through a malicious image file. Malware can be coded into the image file which, when decoded by the fax machine and uploaded to its ...
- Philips Vulnerability Exposes Sensitive Cardiac Patient Information
August 17, 2018
The unpatched flaw would allow a bad actor to execute information-exfiltrating malware, backdoors, ransomware or any other kind of bad code he or she chose. A vulnerability in the Philips IntelliSpace Cardiovascular (ISCV) line of medical data management products would allow privilege escalation and arbitrary code execution – opening the door for an attacker to siphon ...
- DEF CON 2018: Hacking Medical Protocols to Change Vital Signs
August 11, 2018
In recent years there has been more attention paid to the security of medical devices; however, there has been little security research done on the unique protocols used by these devices. Many of the insulin pumps, heart monitors and other gadgets found in hospital rooms use aging protocol to communicate with nurses’ stations and doctors; ...
- Health Care Data of 2 Million People in Mexico Exposed Online
August 7, 2018
A MongoDB database was exposed online that contained health care information for 2 million patients in Mexico. This data included information such as the person’s full name, gender, date of birth, insurance information, disability status, and home address. The database was discovered by security researcher Bob Diachenko via Shodan, which is a search engine for all Internet connected devices and not just web ...
News • Insights • Analysis
